
Glass. ^ ^r/ 

Book 



1 



A HIGH CIVILIZATION 



THE MORAL DUTY OF GEORGIANS 



A DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



GEORGIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



ON THE OCCASION OP ITS 



FIFTH ANNIVERSARY, 



ON MOIVDAY^ 12th. FEBRUABT, 1844. 



BY THE RT. REV. STEPHEN ELLIOTT, JR. 



SAVANNAH: 

PUBLISHED Br A RESOLUTION OP THE SOCIETy. 

1844. 



n 



CORRESPOiNDENCE. 



SAVANNAH, FEB 12Tn, 1844. 
Dear Sir, — The Georgia Historical Society, at their annual meeting 
hcid this evening-, unanimously adopted the following Resolution : 

Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be presented to the Rt. Rev. 
Stephen Elliott, Jr I). I), for the highly interesting and impressive 
discourse delivered this day before them on their Fifth Anniversary, 
vvliich was alike worthy of himself and of the occasion, and that a copy 
be requested for publication. 

I take great pleasure in being' the organ of communicating- the above 
to you, and trust that I may have the same pleasure in conveying your 
ncceptance to the Society. 

1 have the honor to be, witli great respect and esteem, 
Your's, very truly, 

I. K. TEFFT, 
Corresponding Secretarrj. 
Rt. Rev. Stepheit Elliott, Ju. D. D. 



SAVANNAH, FKH. IGrir, 1844. 
Dear Sir, — I received this morning- your'.s'fef last night, covering a 
Resolution of the Georgia Historical Society, requesting a copy of my 
address of yesterday for publication. 

But one answer can be given to sucli a Resolution, that the address is 
at the service of the Society If it can be made useful either to the Socie- 
ty or the State it wdl afford me the highest gratification 
Very lespectfu'l}', your obedient servant and friend, 

S lElMIEN KLUOTT, JR. 
T. K. Tefft, Esa., 

Corresponding Secrelary. 



ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE 



ISKFORE THE 



GEORGIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



Gentlemen OP the Historical Society : 

When Oglethorpe, a century since, fired with benevolence, 
determined to devote the best years of his manhood to the foun- 
dation of a new colony upon these western shores, he little dream- 
ed, how all things had been working together, under the over- 
ruling Providence of God, to render that colony one of the favour- 
ed spots of the earth. His views were bounded by existing 
circumstances ; the relief of the unfortunate debtor — the in- 
crease of the trade and commerce of his native land — the im- 
provement of the Indian tribes — the strengthening of the Biitisli 
colonies upon their Southern frontier. If his hopes or even his 
aspirations stretched beyond these results, they took no definite 
shape ; they embodied, at least, no such idea as has been devel- 
oped in the independence and progression of our present State. 
Nor was he singular in this want of discernment, for ''although 
coming events had cast their shadows before," and the world for 
many ages, in song and story, had fixed its dreams upon a VV est- 
ern continent, no one had realised the distinctive glory of its set- 
tlement. Some had come to these shores in a spirit of the wild- 
est adventure, gratifying at once an ambitious temper and a thirst 
for gold ; others, that they might plant the cross upon this land of 
promise and make its future kingdoms, the kingdoms of God and 
of his Christ ; others again that they might carry out schemes of 
civil and ecclesiastical polity, which they deemed essential to truth 
and to happiness, and which were denied to them at home. It 
was a mingled feeling that peopled the land, a feeling com- 
pounded of some of the worst and some of the choicest ele- 
ments that made up the life of the Old World. None saw 
clearly the result of the movement — injne embraced at once the 



6 

past and the future and linked tliem together for the solution of 
the problem. Each colony had its peculiar spirit — weaved its 
own web of life — felt an indistinct consciousness that it was mov- 
ing forward to some vast purpose, but as with prophecy, the event 
alone could give this consciousness form and feature. And for 
the consummation of that event, preparing as it had been for ages, 
men had to wait, until God's ways — with whom a thousand years 
are as one day — had worked to their result. No wonder that 
they did not see it ; for it is ever God's plan to use nations, as 
well as individuals, for the perfecting of his purposes, and while 
puisuing their schemes of ambition and their di'eams of gain and 
their notions of policy — pursuing them, too, with a consciousness 
of the most unrestrained liberty — to mould their feelings, their 
thoughts, their movements, in such wise, as to guide them inevi- 
tably to the final cause of their creation. 

While all tliis movement of the Old World upon the New was 
in progress atid an unwonted excitement had taken hold of peo- 
ples and nations, no one, J say, grasped the important truth 
that the New World was the theatre which God had kept hidden 
from mankind, while the elements of a more perfect civilization 
than any the world had seen were gathering for its blessing, 
"While they supposed that they were merely transferring to a 
new soil ancient modes of thought and feeling, they were really, 
as Arnold expresses it in another connexion, taking "not only a 
step in advance, but //if last step — it bore mai'ks of the fulness 
of times, as if there would be no future history beyond it. For 
the last eighteen hundred years, Greece had fed the human in- 
tellect ; Rome, taught by Greece and improving upon her teach- 
er, had been the source of law and government, and social civi- 
lization ; and what neither Greece nor Rome could furnish, the 
perfection of moral and spiritual truth, had been given by Christ- 
ianity. The changes which had been wrought had arisen out of 
the reception of these elements by new races, the English, the 
German, the Saxon ; races endowed with such force of character, 
that what was old in itself, when exhibited in them seemed to 
become something new. Now looking anxiously around the 
world for any new races which may receive the seed (so to speak) 
of our present history into a kindly yet a vigorous soil, and may 



reproduce it, the same and yet new, for a future period, Ave know 
not where such are to be found."* W'e may not find new races, 
but we inhabit that New World, where God desit^ned to work out, 
through the combination of tiiese elements of civilization, the 
highest purposes of human nature. These colonies sprang into 
existence in possession of every thing which would inevitably 
give them, so soon as natural difficulties were overcome, immense 
moral weight in the scale of nations. What Europe had been 
gradually moulding herself into for centuries — a series of con- 
stitutional governments — formed the basis of their civil state. 
What Rome had expended all her power and wisdom to attain — 
a higher social life, a life of law and equity — at once came over 
to them with the legal institutions of their father-land. What 
Greece had worked out as the result of a most happy intellec- 
tual freedom and activity — the co xaXov in letters, in arts, in 
taste — flowed in as their heritage from the schools and universi- 
ties in which they had been bred, and to crown the whole, what 
God had been consummating for the nations — the revelation of his 
will — the manifestation of himself in the face of Christ Jesus — 
became the moving cause of much of the emigration which 
made the wilderness a peopled city, and the desert a place of 
habitations. As these colonies grew into life, thev were nuitur- 
ed in religion, literature, laws, lite, which the world had been 
perfecting in its long and varied course ; nurtured, too, under 
circumstances in which many of the evils which had growi, up 
along with them could be shaken oflj and their inherent blessings 
find room to develope themselves, in any direction and toward any 
perfection the will of man might suggest 

While such views as these were overlooked by the colonists of 
the New World, matters of minor importance were proposed as 
inducements to colonial settlement. Georgia, especially, was 
proclaimed as the garden spot of the earth. Two centuries of 
disappointment were not enough to prevent the enthusiasm of the 
Old World from being anew enkindled by the descriptions which 
were circulated respecting this land of perpetual spring and ever 
blooming flowers and exhaustless life. Prose and poetry vied 



• Arnold's Lectures on Modern aistory. pp. 28, 29. London, 1843, 



B 

with eacli other to give celebrity to this choicest spot of nature, 
and Europeans were again led to cast themselves upon America, 
lured by the promise of advantages which they never reaped. 
Wine and silk, and, above all, hmg life, were the great incentives 
held out to the settlement of Georgia, and these expectations — 
delusive as they have proved themselves to be — outweighed the 
wretched fate of the Spaniards, and the miserable experience of 
the other colonists, and even the very recent story of Indian mas- 
sacres at the gales of Charleston. It is vv^onderful that men 
should have risked any thing in the face of such an experience, 
but all things were in the hands of Him, who was overruling the 
wills of men to his own high purposes. 

But although these things were overlooked by those who first 
planned their footsteps upon this soil, it is nevertheless our duty 
to take them up and carry them out to their fullest extent. So 
soon as the concurrence of circumstances, and the sequence of 
events, determine the destiny of a people, that moment is that 
people morally bound to perfect that destiny. However blindly 
its founders may have advanced to their work — however ignor- 
ant they may have been of the ultimate purpose for which they 
were spending their labour and shedding their blood — still were 
they laying the foundation as they were directed, and we must 
raise the superstructure as we are directed. In either case is the 
finger of God pointing to the duty and to the responsibility We 
can see what they were not permitted to see ; their labour hath 
raised us to an height whence we can distinctly discern the whole 
purpose of God, and how we may give it its utmost fulfilment. 
Their part in this great drama, wherein we are now the busy ac- 
tors, was that of toil, and suffering, and peril, and sword ; ours to 
give that life of deprivation its full effect by schooling ourselves 
through a severe intellectual and moral discipline for the attain- 
ment of the high point of civilization marked out for us. Should 
we not march up to that great and noble end in the proper tone 
of mind and spirit, we should be derelict to the trust which has 
been committed to us — we should be taithless to the memories 
of our fathers, who suffered that we might be the heirs not only c»f 
inestimable privileges, but likewise of incalculable responsibili- 
ties. They haye acted their part well ; before their energy and 



perseverance the forests have given place to the habitations of hixu- 
ry; under their wise policy and determined courage a weak colony 
has grown into a powerful State. Every thing which obstruct- 
ed their progress has been put out of the way and we are left in 
full and free possession of a mighty domain, richly covered with 
the blessings of nature and inheriting every element of civilization 
which the experience of the world has accumulated. They 
brought in the inaterials of power and of glory, and removed the 
physical obstacles which hindered their developement ; to us it 
remains to work up those materials into their highest perfection, 
and reach the point of culmination. As one has well expressed 
it, "We must be shamefully and monstrously inferior to our 
fathers, if we do not advance beyond them." 

The highest civilization of a land is wrought out when the so- 
cial, intellectual, moral and religious elements become universal 
and harmonize the will of a free people. The oneness of a 
tyranny is nothing but coercion ; it is force pressing every 
thought and feeling into a like mould ; it has form and system, 
but lacks the vigour and elasticity of life. The oneness of which 
we speak is that produced by a consent of the universal and un- 
fettered will of the people to a line of conduct the noblest and 
the best — the best, not only as a question of interest or policy, 
but the best because the loftiest in tone and the sublimest in truth. 
Such oneness as this gives a mighty impulse to a people and car- 
ries them to true greatness with a certainty which nothing can re- 
sist. In such action as this, the whole power of a commonwealth 
is concentrated, and from the highest to the lowest — nay, there 
is no highest and no lowest when men move in such an harmony, 
for it is all the truest nobleness — there is one motive, one 
feeling, one burning desire to press forward and upward nearer 
the ideal, satisfied with no resting place, till it hath planted its 
foot upon the point nearest perfection. It is this infusion into 
the mass of high principles, social, intellectual, moral, religious — 
it is this unity of purpose and of will for lofty ends — that is civi- 
lization — the civilization which God designed to be worked out 
through the combination of these elements in this land, where 
they all meet upon a wide and glorious arena, with nothing to 
2 



10 

fetter their fullest developement. May we train ourselves for 
the struggle with moral evil, which alone can hinder us from 
treading the path of truth and therefore of glory ! 

There has been much hitherto to prevent Georgia from pos- 
sessing this unity of purpose and of will. Settled at a period 
just preceding the Revolution, its close found her with but a very 
scanty portion of her domain either peopled or possessed. A 
line drawn from a point a very little above Augusta until it struck 
the waters of the Ogeechee, following the course of that river un- 
til it reached Fort Argyle, and diverging thence to the southern- 
most point of St. Simons, would have embraced every thing of 
territory with which Georgia entered upon her career of indepen- 
dence. The residue of her vast domain was peopled by Indian 
tribes, chiefly of the great Mobilian family. To the north among 
the mountain fastnesses were the Cherokees, much of whose rich 
and beautiful country has been just added to the active territory 
of the State. Along the Savannah between the Currahee and 
Auo-usta and extending westwardly over the Oconee were the 
XJchees. Spreading westwardly from the Oconee and covering 
all that beautiful rolling country between the branches of the 
Alatamaha — once the favourite hunting ground of the Indians, 
now the ravaged and desolated clay hills of Morgan, Newton, Put- 
nam, Jones and Jasper — and sweeping away to the Gulf of 
Mexico and the Alabama river, were the numerous tribes of the 
Muscogees or Creeks. With a domain extending from the At- 
lantic Ocean to the Mississippi and from the Savannah to the Flor- 
ida line, Georgia could call up to her Legislative councils so late 
as 1784, delegates from only a few Parishes skirting the lower Sa- 
vannah and the Atlantic coast. From that time until the present 
has she been incessantly engaged in reclaiming her territory and 
assimilating to herself the emigrants that have flowed in, as she 
opened hei fresh and lovely lands to the stranger and the wander- 
er. And too often did they flow in merely to despoil her beauty 
and leave her to years of widowhood and desolation. It is mourn- 
ful, as one passes over that glorious country between the Broad 
and the Oakmulgee rivers, and listens to the traditions of its beau- 
ty, over which the older settlers love to linger, as it lay one vast 
rolling woodland with the wild deer bounding through it, and the 



11 

btill wiiiier Indian rejoicing in its gorgeous vistas, to look upon 
the change which has come over its face. The eye rests now 
upon decaying villages and sweeps of deserted hills, protruding 
their bald heads and furrowed cheeks, fit emblems of the reck- 
less and dissipated culture which has so soon covered them with 
the marks of decrepitude, deep tokens of the tears which nature 
herself has shed over the sad treatment she has received ! An 
old man said to me with deep emotion, " fSuch farmers as those 
in sinning against natute, have sinned against God." 

The domain of Georgia originally extended as far south only 
as the Alalamaha, and it was not until just a few years before the 
revolt of the colonies that her charter was extended so as to em- 
brace the tenitory between that river and her present southern 
line. The convention between South Carolina and Georgia in 
1787, at Beaufort, arranged with South Carolina her northern 
line and confirmed her title to the southern portion of her tem- 
tory. From the dale of this convention was Georgia engaged in 
laying out new counties in the Broad River country, until 1794, 
when incipient steps were taken to organize what was technically 
called the Tallisee, which had been ceded by treaty with the 
Creeks at Galphintqn in 1785. This Tallisee extended from the 
Alatamaha to the St. Mary's, and included the present counties 
of Glynn, Wayne, Camden, Appling and Ware. Again was 
there a long pause, during which the State was creeping slowly 
up to the Oconee and the Alatamaha on the West and to the 
Gurrahee on the North. The year 1S02 witnessed the ratifica- 
tion of the acts of agreement and cession mada the previous 
spring between the United States' Commissioners on the one 
part and those of Georgia on the other, by which Georgia ceded 
all her territory West of her present boundary line, to the United 
States, upon certain conditions, one of wh.ch was the speedy ex- 
tinguishment of Indian titles within her present limits. In pur- 
suance of this act of agreement and cession, the Indian title to a 
part of the lands lying between the Oconee and Oakmulgee was 
extinguished by treaty at Fort Wilkinson in the summer of 1802, 
and their title to the remaining portion of the same lands by 
treaty at the City of Washington, in 1805. 

Here let us pause and look at Georgia in 181-1, before the treaty 



12 

of Fort Jackson. It is just thirty years since and we find the 
State in possession of not quite one half of her territory. Much 
of the most lovely portion of her domain — that mountain region 
skirting the borders of the Carolinas — and all of the richest of 
it — those exhaustless lands between the Alatamaha and the 
Chatahoochie — was still the heritage of the Cherokees and the 
Creeks. They still roamed over the picturesque vallies of the 
Naucoochie, and the Soqui, and sported beside the deep chasm, 
and unapproachable cataract of the Tallu]gi,h. They still coursed 
the deer over the rolling forests of the South West, and laved 
their sinewy limbs in the rushing waters of the Flint and among 
the rapids of the Chatahoochie. Spots which are now covered 
with the habitations of luxury, were then in the garb of their 
creation. Forests, whose silence was then unbroken save by the 
roar of the wild beast or the still more fearful yell of the Savage, 
have given place to the busy marts of commerce and of trade. 
All this time was Georgia shoi'n of her wealth, almost ignorant 
that she was the mistress of mines of gold and of acres more val- 
uable far than gold; all this time was she toiling, as it were, 
after her greatness, seeing it in visions, yet not realising it — 
marching painfully towards it, yet never graspijig it, until she 
covered with the elements of civilization all the land which was 
embraced within her limits. 

It was impossible, under circumstances like these, that the 
Stale could unfold its resources either with power or harmony. 
Her new territory was filled with emigrants, who, for a time at 
least, wei'e not assimilated to the State which received them. 
They necessal^ly brought along with them the feelings and the 
prejudices of their own homes and looked back upon the States 
which they had left, with more pride and attachment than upon 
her who had adopted them. Besides, the fresh outlying lands 
seemingly too abundant ever to be exhausted, created in the peo- 
ple a restlessness which was adverse to every thing like perma- 
nent improvement. With improvement of that kind, there must 
always be connected a feeling of stability — a hope, at least, that 
it will descend upon and be useful to our children. But when the 
prospect was before men, that every decade of years would open 
to them a virgin and fertile soil — fertile in reality, but still more 



13 

fertile because imagination lent its colouring to reality — tlic 
temptation to a wasteful use of the land they possessed was irre- 
sistible, and icestward, westward was inscribed on every house- 
hold banner. No cultivation was adopted but that which might 
soonest wring from the soil its treasures, careless of the waste 
which was committed upon the heritage of the State, and thought- 
less of the consequences they were entailing upon her for long 
years to come. No dwellings were erected which looked beyond 
the extinguishment of the next Indian title, and men tabernacled 
rather than abode in the land which they had received at the 
bountiful hands of the State. Poor requital for her liberality ! 
She has learned, almost too late, that where there is no tie be- 
tween her and her people than the sordid one of interest, that tie 
will be carelessly snapped so soon as that same interest sum- 
mons them elsewhere. 

From 1814 to 1825 there were four cessions of land, that of 
Fort Jackson in 1814, of the Cherokee Agency in 1817, of the 
Creek Agency on Flint River in 1818, and of the Indian Springs 
in 1825, and these placed Georgia in possession of some of her 
very richest lands and extinguished the title of the Creek Indians 
to all the territory within the limits of the State. These succes- 
sive cessions gave to Georgia that fine mountain region, which 
is fast becoming the retreat of luxury and refinement, and those 
fertile South-western tracts which are to minister to that luxury 
and work out that refinement. It is not twenty years — less than 
the period of a generation — and only then did the State lay her 
hand upon territory absolutely essential to her completeness 
and the stability of her people ; the one section fujnishiug them 
with a healthful summer retreat and thus obviating the necessity 
of an annual emigration to the North — so prolific a source of 
expense and idleness — the other jjroviding for them within her 
own limits lands of unbounded fertility and checking the Western 
current which was perpetually draining her of her resources and 
her population. And what a change have these twenty years 
wrought ! They have served to do the work of a century, and 
already are improvements of every kind gathering thickly around 
these favoured regions. Schools of a very high order; colleges 
of good repute; dwellings that may compete with the luxury of 



14 

older countries, have sprung up, as it were, by magic, and are but 
heralds of the glory that is dawning upon the State, if she will 
only be true to herself. And it is a singular coincidence that 
almost at one and the same time, the Cherokees and the Creeks 
ceded those tracts of country which must eventually play into 
each other's hands — the salubrious regions of Hall and Haber- 
sham, and the rich cotton lands of the Flint and the Chatahoochie. 
May a blessing follow this seeming Providence and prove that 
the hand of the Lord was in it. 

And yet after all this was Georgia still doomed to ten years 
more of struggle before she could gain final possession of her 
domain. Her best farming lands — that which was wanting to 
give compactness and harmony to the whole — were still in the 
possession of the Cherokees. The Chatahoochie was still hev 
boundary upon the North-west, while she had a right — at least 
such a right as any State could lay to Indian lands, a right which 
each, in its time, had exercised and seen no evil in it, until it was 
their neighbour's turn to reap the benefit — to stretch herself to 
the Lookout mountain and the Hiwassee. No wonder that she 
struggled hard for these lands and that the Indian struggled 
equally hard to retain them, for they are worth any struggle. 
Combining in a happy degree, healthfulness, fertility, and pictur- 
esque beauty, containing mines of gold, mountains of iron, and in- 
exhaustible quarries of marble, richly watered with bold yet 
quiet streams, the Cherokee country must become eventually the 
garden of the State. It cannot vie in magnificence with the 
North-eastern counties, where the ganglion of mountains pre- 
sents every species of the sublime in nature ; neither can it 
compare in fertility with the rice lands of the Atlantic coast or 
the cotton lands of the South-west, but it combines the char- 
acteristics of them all in a sufficient degree to satisfy the most 
fastidious. The banks of its streams may almost compete 
with the farming lands of Kentucky and the beautiful vallies 
which run down to the Coosa can bear a population as thick as 
that of the older countries of Europe. No wonder that the In- 
dian struggled for it, as he never again will find so pleasant a 
land, and wander where he may, he will sigh for the flowery 
banks of the Etowali and the fertile levels of the Oostanalau. 



15 

Well for him was it that he was conquered in the struggle, for it 
has placed him in juxtaposition with his own race, out of the 
reach, we trust, of the vices of civilization, yet not beyond the in- 
fluence of its blessings ! 

It was not until 183S that the removal of the Cherokee Indians 
finally took place and Georgia found herself, after a tedious 
struggle of sixty years, the mistress of her fine domain. What 
the memorial of the Senate and House of Representatives of 
Georgia stated in 1819 was still more forcible in 1838. " It has 
long been the desire of Georgia that her settlements should be 
extended to her ultimate limits; that the soil within her bounda- 
ries should be subjected to her control, and that her police, or- 
ganization and government, should be fixed and permanent. For 
the fulfilment of these desires, we have waited the tide of events 
and observed the march of time for seventeen years. Within 
this period, we have witnessed, with much gratification, the spread 
of the Union and the accession of States and Territories, greater 
in extent than the original confederation. Two of the members 
of this vast family are the descendants of Georgia ; yet Georgia 
loses her strength and influence as a member of the Republic, 
retarded as she is, in her growth and population and denied the 
fostering aid of her common patent." 

It would thus seem that Georgia only now finds herself in a 
position in which she may hope to carry out to their highest re- 
sults, the purposes of her settlement. For the first time, I speak 
of course inclusively of a few years last past, does her population 
extend over every part of her vast teriitonal surface. No longer 
is there any temptation uponher people to restlessness and change, 
or if there is, it is only from one portion of her borders to ano- 
ther for the purpose of final and permanent abode. Whatever is 
done now, must be done substantially. There are no more lands 
to be opened — no more Indian titles to be extinguished — the 
terra incognita is all unveiled and stripped of the charm which 
traditi«)n and imagination had weaved around it. All that 
Georgia is, her sons now know — all that she shall be, remains 
for them, under God, to determine! 

For the first time, in her history, may Georgia now look for a 
native j/ojjulation — a population born upon her soil and loving 



16 

her because they may call her mother. Not that those who have 
emigrated into her do not love her — many of her most faithful 
and devoted public servants come within this category — but 
nothing can replace the peculiar feeling which man sucks in 
with his mother's milk for the spot where first he breathed the 
air of Heaven. Those who have come into her may feel them- 
selves identified with her, so that her interest is their interest, but 
strive as they may, they cannot acquire that enthusiastic love — 
made up of moral sentiment and youthful association — which 
springs out of an identity as well of lineage, as of pursuit. The 
Greeks expressed this feeling when they gloried in being 
" (x-oTti'jpr,vsg" s(ms of the soil, and felt that a stain upon their coun- 
try was a stain upon a mother's I'eputation, and a reproach to her an 
insult that went to their hearts as to the hearts of children. This 
is what Georgia, for years to come, should especially cultivate — 
this feeling o^ homebred affection — the saying of her sons, "This 
is my own, my native land," and not only saying it, but living it 
in thought and word and action. It has been impossible for her 
hitherto to have possessed it in her length and breadth, but now 
she may, and now she will, and it must give her an impulse that 
shall show her sister States that she is "as a giant awaking out of 
sleep." Let her sons but lock their shields together, and nothing 
can impede her progress tn greatness ! 

Nor is it wrong to cultivate this feeling. It is entirely consis- 
tent with kindness and sympathy for those who may cast their lot 
in the midst of her ; nay, it is a guarantee to them that they are 
casting that lot where every individual feels himself a conserva- 
tor of the public faith and the public honour. Under our system 
of goveri.ment every State is Sovereign, save where that sover- 
eignty has been yielded up, and the surest path to united great- 
ness is that each part should cultivate greatness within itself. There 
are few stronger safeguards, I speak as a man, against dishonor 
and crime — there are few more stirring incentives to nobleness 
and self-devotion, than this love of country — this liome-fcel'mg 
towards one's State, as if all her sons formed one great fire-side, 
and the public hearth was to be kept unpolluted like a private 
one! Local attachments can never be effaced. Man may reason 
against them ; may fly away from them ; may strive to create them 



17 

anew ; but ilie heart goes back to the fire-side of its childhood and 
the play-grounds of its y»)Uth. Man every day goes forth to toil, 
cheered by the single hope that he may one day return to the .scenes 
of his ewrly recollections. History is full of the record of those who 
have died that glory might be wreathed around their place of 
birth, or that shame might be averted from it. Such a feeling can 
be productive of nothing but good, for it adds to all the other res- 
traints upon human nature this mighty one, of a high public char- 
acter resting upon a private one ! 

This then, as I said before, is the feeling which should be es- 
pecially cultivated for years to come in what may be called 
" Young Georgia'^ — the feeling that this is Home, and that noth-* 
ing but the direst necessity shall separate them from it — nay 
more, when that neces^^ity comes, and they are forced to burst 
the bonds of nativity, to go forth, like the nobleman in Sterne, 
having first laid up their swords in the public keeping, until they 
shall be ready to reclaim them. Generated at every part of the 
State — cultivated and nurtured in the homestead — it would 
create a bond of sympathy among the young — those who must, 
in a few years, hold in their hands the destiny of the State — 
stronger than ambition or interest or party. What could external 
politics advance that could compete with a feeling like this? 
"What enthusiasm could ever gather around the name of a public 
man like that which would be kindled at the name of Georgia ? 
The question would no longer be, how will this course of policy 
affect this or that party, or what influence will it have upon this 
or that Presidential candidate, but how will it affect that which 
is dearer to me than men or party, my own native land. Geor- 
gia, as a State, would then stand above all other influences and 
nothing would find favour among her sons that did not tend to 
place her higher in the scale of States, or stronger on the foun- 
dations of truth and justice. An unity of purpose would thus be 
created through the impulses of nature, and a homogeneousness 
insensibly grow up, which under continued cultivation would 
proceed on to higher perfection. 

The next step in the increase of this home-feeling and this uni- 
ty of the people, must be to collect our young men together in 
literary institutions of our own creation. School and college 
3 



16 

friendships are those which last through life, and such friendships 
must exercise a powerful influence in assuaging the bitterness of 
party in after life, nay, in preventing the division of the State into 
parties and cliques. Hence the advantage of one well endowed 
public University; so endowed as that the highest education may be 
obtained at home and the leading minds of the State be cherished 
up to greatness in contact with each other. Thrown together at 
a time of life, when the evil passions of our nature have not yet 
fully developed themselves, personal prejudices would be worn 
away, sectional feelings would be softened, and the mountains 
and the seaboard would find that their very truest interest was to 
be faithful and just to each other. Every State that would im- 
press itself morally and intellectually upon its age — take for ex- 
amples Massachusetts and Connecticut — must build up within it- 
self and sustain, if need be, from the public coffers an University that 
may give at home to its sons as thorough an education, as can be 
procured any where else. So surely as this is not done, must her 
young men be educated below the standard of the country and be 
made to feel through life their inferiority, or else be sent abroad 
to form their feelings and their sympathies among strangers, per- 
haps to nurture prejudices against their home, that will go very 
far to unfit them for usefulness in future life. Now is the time 
for Georgia to assume this position, and lavish — I purposely use 
the word — her treasures upon the endowment of her University. 
If there is any thing in which economy is a fault, it is in connex- 
ion with education. Well paid Professors and a numerous corps 
of them too — an extensive library which might enable her litera- 
ry men to pursue at home any train of thought or matter of re- 
Search — scholarships and fellowships to nurture her own sons 
for the high places of literature in her schools and colleges — such 
things as these would keep at home much treasure which is now 
spent abroad in the pursuit of learning, would elevate the intel- 
lectual standard of the whole State, and would bring our young 
statesmen together in the halls of legislation not with the feel- 
ings of rival gladiators, but with the hearty welcome of school 
and college friends, come up to bestow upon their common Pa- 
rent the fruits of their intellectual maturity. 

These bonds of nature and of education having thus combined 



19 

to harmonize the State, the next step is to bring these elements 
of higb civilization into still greater homogeneousness by a chain 
of internal improvements leading to a rapid intercommunion. 
Nothing will so soon and so happily break down all sectional jea- 
lousy, and all foolish prejudices, as bringing the people face to 
face in a constant intercourse, Hilhcrt<» the various sections of 
the State have been almost unknown to each other, and the cities 
north of us have been much more familiar to Georgians than the 
cities of their own State. In the Legislature, this section and 
that section have been bandied against each other, as if the good 
of the one part was not the good of every part ; as if one member 
of the body corporate could pulsate with joy or with sorrow and 
the whole body not feel the influence. It is no matter through 
what sections these roads may run — it is no matter what they 
may cost, within any reasonable amount — it is no matter whether 
they repay to the State in money any expenditure which may be 
made upon them ; the benefit which will accrue from bringing 
the people together and binding them in the ties of hospitality 
and of interest, will far out-weigh ail the cost of the expenditure. 
It is a narrow view to consider the mere money return of such 
chains of intercommunion; there is a moral return which they are 
ever making of infinitely higher and moie enduring value; are- 
turn visible in softened prejudices, in enlarged views, in loftier 
aspirations, in the advancement of the social affections ; a return 
necessary and beneficial to all, but especially necessary to a State 
of such vast territory as that of Georgia, and just assimilating to 
herself a population galhei'ed from almost every State of the Uni- 
on. 

Unless this be done speedily, and I rejoice as a citizen of 
Georgia, that it is rapidly progressing, the exchange trade of the 
State will find other out-lets than the proper ones of her own 
Atlantic towns, and seriously disturb that homogeneousness after 
which we have shown that we ought m >st especially to strive. 
The natural out-let of the country iN'ortli-wjst of the Chatahoo- 
chie IS the Coosa River, and with a very little labour — unless an 
artificial channel be at once created, linking that fertile farming 
country with the rest of the State — will all that trade be diverted 
to Mobile. Without a rail road at very low rates, it could fiud a 



■>y 



20 



profitable market at no other point. The natural out-let of the 
rich cotton lands of the South-west are the Flint and the Chata- 
hoochie, and unless an artificial channel be created, binding in like 
manner those inexhaustible cotton regions to the rest of the State, 
must all that trade pass to the Gulf of Mexico. And thus would the 
commercial connexion of two most important sections of our State 
be disjoined from her and with that disjunction would ensue 
the disjunction of interest, of sympathy, of feeling, and finally of 
legislation. But binding all the parts to each other, the line of in- 
tercourse would follow the course of trade, and one purpose 
would move the whole population from the mountains to the At- 
lantic. 

We too. Gentlemen of the Historical Society, may exercise a 
poweiful influence in the production of this State-feeling and 
State-unity of which I have spoken so much, by collecting to- 
gether the materials which make up her annals and preserv- 
ing the traditions and associatictns which constitute so laige a 
part of the pride of a country. The abstract will not do for hu- 
man nature. It must have the concrete ; it must fix its affections 
upon spots, upon scenes, upon individuals ; it must twine its feel- 
ings around events and circumstances, and oft-times a name, a word 
will enkindle an enthusiasm, which not all the elaboration of elo- 
quence could elicit. And these materials of enthusiasm it is our 
province to collect. We have associated together that we may 
gather up the ashes of the depaited great and inurn them for pos- 
terity; that we may embody the floating traditions of the State and 
give them a local habitation and a name; that we may call back the 
affections of the people to spots consecrated by the labour and the 
blood of their fathers; that we may fill the young with enthusiasm 
for the past and with an honourable ambition to emulate its vir- 
tues and its fame. We can do much to improve the future in the 
perpetuation of the past, to turn the feeling inward upon the State, 
which has too long been wasted elsewhere. Who can calculate 
the concentrating and harmonizing effect which such a wi iter as 
Scott has produced upon his country 1 He has invested eveiy 
glen, and crag, and loch, and mountain, and ruin with bl world- 
interest, and in doing this has made every Scotchman proudei that 
he is one, and linked his heart to his home by ties stronger tlian 



21 

any distance or time can obliterate. He did what we are strivino- 
to do — caught every tradition as it floated by and gave it perma- 
nence ; seized every event which told for his country's glory and 
riveted it upon the imaginations of his countrymen ; evolved her 
story from the dust of antiquity and made it the possession of eve- 
ry cottage fire-side. We may not compete with his imagination, 
nor need we, for our work is history — his was fiction illustraring 
history — but we can imitate his research and industry, and rescue 
from the ravages of time, all that is great and noble, and worth pre- 
serving in the slory of the past. We are but a youthlul race if we 
reckon back only to the beginning of our colonial existence; if we 
cross that line, European history is our history; but the aborigines 
have a history, one of deep interest and moving pathos — a history, 
too, connected with a still anterior civilization, and this will yet 
give an interest to scenes now unnoticed, because nothin<T aflect- 
ing our race has been transacted there. Lotus perpe'uate the 
story of the Indian, if we cannot his race, and prove the superiori- 
ty of letters by conferring immortali'y. where none of the other 
elements of civilization seem able even to preserve existence ! 



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